golfrewind.com

Im a pretty new golfer who shoots in the low 90s to high 80s. I have a full compliment of solid equipment but usually play with just random golf balls.

Id like to narrow that down and start playing with a single ball and keep it consistent. My choices are narrowed down to the following as price IS an issue for me, golf is super expensive as it is.

from rockbottomgolf.com the used "MINT" nxt tour or dt solo which are slightly under 30 dollars for three dozen. Additionally, another option is the maxfli noodle which sells for 30 dollars for three dozen brand new.

I hit the ball fairly far with my irons and hit the ball with a slight draw and hit it very high with my irons. I dont have a problem with roll or anything on greens since i hit the ball so high so im not super concerned with spin on longer irons. I guess id like something that stays fairly straight and long and has good greenside feel. Just not too advanced.

Thanks for your time and recommendations.

I would personally say that a new noodle is far better than almost any recycled ball, whatever their rating. Recycled balls are a virtual crapshoot. They are mostly water balls -- and you just don't know if they were underwater for an hour, a day, a week, a month, or a year. The rating they give the balls is going to be based on looks, not any testing of their performance. That is to say, not any physical testing to determine how unresponsive a ball is because it's core is waterlogged. Water gets into the core in less than 3 days, and performance suffers. How clean a salvaged ball is is going to be primarily determined by how clean the water is.

This is a funny story -- I played a course this past summer twice, about 2 1/2 weeks apart. The first time out I hit a ball into a water hazard, and it wasn't obviously sitting up somewhere so I let it go. I come back the next time around and hit another ball near where I lost the first one. Well, it hadn't rained at all those weeks in between, and in addition to finding my ball from the current round, I found the one I lost the previous time through. It had my sharpie mark on it and everything. It was half buried in some mud and from the color of it, you'd have thought it was in there for something like 3 years. The water there was the bank of a stagnant pool of water. Now, the flip side, on a different course I found a ball in a fast moving creek that looked brand new -- it was an old balata ball. It has been quite a long time since they even made those -- sure maybe someone opened a really old package but it is more likely that the fact that it was under clean water kept the cover pretty clean. Cosmetics alone cannot tell you how old a ball is, and I'm pretty darn sure that those used balls get sorted purely on cosmetics.

Since you are shooting in the low 90s and high 80s, I'm guessing that you aren't losing too many balls per round. Usually, I only recommend people buy used balls if they are losing quite a few per round -- 3 or 4 or more*. Balls are expensive, and if you can lose a sleeve around, you probably aren't good enough where the characteristics of the ball matter. But if you are only losing 1 or 2 per round*, I think that you do yourself a little bit of a disservice by playing recycled balls. The swing has enough variables in it as it is -- do you really need how the ball is going to react to also be a random variable.

* I just wanted to note that obviously course difficulty factors into this as well. If you are playing a hard course, water on more than half the hole or really tight tree-lined fairways, losing 3 balls probably isn't so bad. Make your own judgment here, the number of balls lost rule certainly isn't set in stone.

There are some very good balls to be had. 36 Noodles for $30 is a good deal. Also on rockbottom, the 4 dozen Dunlop LoCo balls for $32 is good. The 4 dozen Maxfli Revolutions for $36 is pretty good -- you can usually find these 24 for $20 in Target or Sprawl-Mart these days, too. Wilson's Dx2 at 36 balls for $30 is good. If you wanted to go just a little higher in quality, the Bridgestone e5's (not this year's model the e5+) at 36 balls for $45 is good, too. Also available at most Targets/Sprawl-Marts is Precept double dozen pack of Laddie Xtremes for $20.

All of these are pretty good lower medium price range balls. They aren't distance rocks, and they will have some spin around the greens. Sure, it won't be like a urethane covered ball (though the e5's do have a urethane cover), but that's what you get for the medium priced balls. A lot of these are last years or even a few year's back models, but that doesn't mean they aren't still good balls.

In summary, I just think that with the scores you are shooting now, having a consistent ball and not a possibly waterlogged one is probably more what you're aiming at.

Finally, with all that said, there are many people who swear up and down on the Internet forums that their recycled ProV1s pay just like brand new ones. Opinions on this are pretty mixed. I have never seen a true objective test of waterlogged balls. Every test I've seen has come from a company wanting to sell you something, so I always look at them pretty skeptically. And, I've seen tests on both sides -- tests from the recycled ball sellers that show no significant difference -- and test from a company wanting to sell ball manufactures a paint that will darken the longer the ball stays under water -- the idea being that no one would buy a really dark ball because it's clearly been underwater longer than 3 months. So, take my writing and others' on the Internet at face value. You'll ultimately have to make up your own mind.

Play a dead course and do a 4 ball singe scramble, using 1 control and 3 of the balls you're testing..

I do it all the time..

Best one for me so far? Is the new Top Flite Gamer

thanks for the advice guys

the dunlop loco looks good along with the noodle for sure. ill look into both of those because i agree that consistency in the balll i play is probably as important as anything. additonally, both seem like good fits as i like the feel of a softer lower compression ball instead of a harder ball like the pro v1

i dont think spin will be a huge issue as i do hit the ball super high and always get a very soft landing on the green even with the three and four iron. thanks in part to my irons imo